The real story on Doug Ford and Pierre Poilievre's relationship, or lack thereof...

Reality is far more complicated for both men.

I started writing this piece almost two months ago.

This was long before Marilyn Gladu decided she was done being a social conservative, Mark Carney hating, Freedom Caucus loving Conservative MP and wanted to become a Liberal MP. Perhaps more importantly, it was before Katy Merrifield, Pierre Poilievre’s Director of Communications left under less than stellar circumstances.

While Gladu’s floor crossing is rightfully getting headlines, Merrifield’s departure from Poilievre’s staff is significant. She’s the comms staffer who has been helping Poilievre take a new tone and style with the media, she’s been central to changing how the message is delivered.

Now, like Gladu, Merrifield is gone.

All of this comes against the backdrop of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre having good European and American tours. His appearances on the Triggernometry Podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience and the Diary of a CEO Podcast were all good and well received and then he came home and things went south for him.

As with the main story that I am about to tell, the relationship, or lack thereof, between Poilievre and the most successful and powerful conservative politician in Canada - Ontario Premier Doug Ford - the fault lies with Poilievre.

Some of you will balk at that, will say that Ford is just a Liberal and isn’t a conservative in any way shape or form. I can actually argue both sides in that debate and I have. Those who follow me closely will know that I have been highly critical of Ford on these fronts.

Yet, at the end of the day, he does lead a conservative leaning party and is instinctively a conservative. It might shock some, especially in Western Canada, that Ford spends less per capita than Danielle Smith’s government.

But that isn’t the purpose of this post.

Today, I want to explain the rift between Ford and Poilievre and why it started long before the last federal election campaign. This isn’t a defence of Ford, it is an explanation of how we ended up where we are.

Perhaps the events of the last few days spell the end of Poilievre’s time as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada - that is a very real possibility now and one I will explore later. For now, let’s look at how we ended up where we are and how a national conservative movement pushes forward.

Reaching out and reaching in as Sarah McLachaln said…

Steve Outhouse, the still fairly newly minted campaign manager for the Conservative Party of Canada has been trying to build bridges with provincial parties. This is a good thing, though let me tell you that the detachment between the federal party and say the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t be fixed overnight.

As I have written many times since the last election, if the Conservatives want to win, they need all parts of their coalition working together. In politics you win by addition, not subtraction; you need to grow your base and your coalition, and that means you lean on friends.

Doug Ford’s recent comments to the Toronto Star that seemed to imply he was cheering for a Carney majority shows there is still work to be done.

“It’s no different than the federal government. They have three byelections, and if they win them, then they’ll have a majority. And again, a magical word in both countries is everyone wants certainty. Everyone wants to move forward,” said Ford.

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“I just believe in majority governments,” said Ford.

In some respects, this is simply Ford acknowledging reality. Of the three by-elections, two are in Liberal strongholds in Toronto and the third is near Montreal where the Liberals are spending a fortune. They will get a majority by winning just two of the three seats, but they are likely to win all three.

Still, Ford’s comments show the work that needs to be done to heal the rift between the Conservatives in Ottawa and the PCs at Queen’s Park and elsewhere. If there was a blossoming relationship between Ford and Poilievre, it’s doubtful Ontario’s premier would have said those words.

Instead, there remains no relationship. None at all.

There is a bizarre belief out there that this rift between Ontario Premier Doug Ford and the federal Conservative Party started in the last election when Kory Teneycke, Ford’s campaign manager, publicly criticized Poilievre and his campaign.

It’s simply not true.

I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know every single detail, but I do know many of them, more than most people. I’ve been saying that I would share this for some time, and it’s taken a while to put this together, so here goes.

It’s a long one, so grab a coffee and settle in.

A little backstory...

The full story goes back years, into the Stephen Harper era, when Ford Nation was seen as a valuable partner. It includes a rift that started under Andrew Scheer during the 2019 federal election, never healed under Erin O’Toole during the 2021 federal election and opened into a chasm with the election of Pierre Poilievre as federal leader in the fall of 2022.

It’s a story that involves ego, blame on both sides, old friendships turned sour and bad political judgement based on hubris.

Too often in Canada, conservatives prefer to shoot at each other inside their own tent rather than doing what the Liberals do and work together despite their differences to win the thing they value most – power. In the last election the Liberals were united and fighting for their lives, the Conservatives were divided.

If Justin Trudeau had stayed Prime Minister and the Liberals were still below 30% in the polls when an election eventually came, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Unfortunately for Pierre Poilievre, in the 2025 election campaign, Trudeau was gone, the Liberals had a new leader in Mark Carney who voters gravitated to, and Donald Trump was pushing them toward Carney. In that scenario, Poilievre needed all the help he could get from various parts of the conservative coalition, and he didn’t have it – he didn’t even ask for it.

As unpopular as it will be for many federal Conservative supporters to hear, the majority of the blame for the situation that unfolded falls at the feet of Pierre Poilievre.

What I will spell out for you is the fullest story I can based on my experience being at some of these events, covering the campaigns and knowing and speaking to all the players named and involved.

Harper and Ford Nation had deep ties...

There were deep ties between the Harper government and Ford Nation, the political movement that surrounds the Ford family. Those ties existed long before Doug Ford entered politics. His father Doug Sr. had served as an MPP at Queen’s Park where he became close with fellow MPP Jim Flaherty.

Flaherty would go on to join Stephen Harper’s team in 2005, help form a Conservative government and became Harper’s Finance Minister and right-hand man.

As Rob Ford’s political career grew, eventually becoming Mayor of Toronto in 2010, he had the support of Jim Flaherty. Flaherty brought Harper into the Ford family orbit, taking him to the annual Ford Fest barbeque events and introducing the two men.

If you’ve never seen a Ford Fest it somewhere between a political event, an Amway rally and a religious revival tent all held over burgers and hotdogs in a major park in Toronto’s suburbs. The support the Ford family receives is difficult to explain to those who haven’t seen it, but it runs deep and attracts devotion from diverse communities across the Toronto area.

Ford Nation backed the Conservative Party and expected the same in return…

In 2011, Rob Ford stuck his neck out for Stephen Harper and the federal Conservatives and endorsed the Tories to win a majority government.

From The Globe and Mail in April 2011.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has thrown his support behind Stephen Harper, an endorsement Conservatives hope bolsters their GTA electoral fortunes on Monday.

Canadian mayors don’t frequently pick sides during federal elections.

But Mr. Ford said he couldn’t stay neutral because he’s worried the Tories’ rivals would raise taxes if they took office.

“People asked ‘Why are you getting involved? You’re supposed to be non-political,’ “ he told a crowd of more than 1,000 at a Harper rally in Brampton.

“I said enough is enough.”

Ford didn’t have to do that, but along with his brother Doug, then just a city councillor, the Ford family put their well-oiled political machine behind Harper’s Conservatives. It worked, in that election, the Conservatives made big inroads not just in the far flung suburbs but in Toronto itself.

Due in part to the help of Ford Nation, the Conservative Party won Don Valley East, Don Valley West, Scarborough Centre, Etobicoke Centre, Etobicoke Lakeshore, York-Centre, and Eglinton-Lawrence. These ridings are all at the core of Ford Nation territory and it’s unlikely Harper’s team would have won them without the support of the Ford family.

It was an act that would not be forgotten.

In 2015, Harper stood by Ford Nation...

After nearly 10 years in power, Harper was trailing badly as the October 2015 election was coming to a close. Various polls put the Conservatives 4, 7 or 8 points back of Justin Trudeau and his Liberals.

Rob Ford was no longer mayor having stepped down in 2014, running for councillor instead as he fought cancer. His much-publicized problems with drugs, including smoking crack, were mostly in the rearview mirror but still created controversy.

That didn’t stop Harper from campaigning with Rob Ford when in the Toronto area where Ford remained wildly popular.

Photo taken with Stephen Harper and the Ford family ahead of an Etobicoke rally in October 2015.

Just ahead of a massive rally of more than 1,000 people at the Toronto Congress Centre, an excerpt from a book published by Rob Ford’s former chief of staff Mark Towhey was posted online. It detailed what Towhey described as a volatile domestic situation inside Rob Ford’s home.

There was pressure on Harper to cancel the rally or disassociate from the Ford family; he did neither.

In fact, not only did Harper pose for a photo with the Ford family that was shared online; he also gave both brothers a shoutout from the stage after Doug Ford had introduced Harper.

From a CBC report at the time:

“Make no mistake, God help this country. It would be an absolute disaster if Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne were running this country,” Ford said to big cheers.

The Fords have been campaigning heavily for the Conservatives, sitting in the front row at an event earlier in the week in Etobicoke and heavily publicizing Saturday night’s rally.

When chips were down, the Ford family stood with Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper stood with the Ford family.

A few years later, Doug Ford was left wondering where the loyalty went as he felt cut loose by the Conservative Party and its new leadership.

Clearly 2019 was very different than 2015...

In June 2018, Doug Ford became the unlikely 26th Premier of Ontario. His accession to the post was unlikely because just six months earlier, Ford wasn’t even leader of the PC Party of Ontario; that was a position occupied by Patrick Brown.

When Brown was ousted over claims of sexual impropriety – claims that resulted in a lawsuit against Bell Media that was settled out of court years later – Ford swept in and took a tightly contested leadership race.

Despite being written off as unqualified and politically toxic, Ford not only won the PC leadership, he went on to win a solid majority in the June 2018 provincial election.

It started out well enough and in August of 2018, Ford was a featured speaker at the federal Conservative convention in Halifax.

A few months later, in October 2018, Andrew Scheer, the then leader of the Conservative Party of Canada visited Ford at his Queen’s Park office.

“It’s great to have another visitor, Andrew Scheer, the leader of the Conservative Party and the next Prime Minister of Canada,” Ford said as he introduced Scheer to the Queen’s Park media.

The two men then spoke about issues they agreed needed to be fixed in Canada. That included scrapping Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax, stopping illegal border crossings, and bringing down interprovincial trade barriers.

Both men seemed to be in sync and yet less than a year later a rift had opened up.

Trudeau campaigned against Ford, not Scheer in Ontario…

Media began noticing that Ford wasn’t campaigning with Scheer in the 2019 election. There was one simple reason for that – Doug Ford wasn’t welcome on the voyage.

By the summer of 2019, Ford’s popularity had fallen. The spring budget was unpopular with many voters; the chaos of his government’s first year in office had taken its toll, and federal Conservative candidates were saying that Ford may cost them the election.

Publicly, Ford was saying he was too busy running the province to get involved in the campaign. The truth is, Ford had adjourned the legislature until after the October vote to keep his government out of the spotlight and was trying to help the federal Conservatives topple Justin Trudeau.

Scheer, meanwhile, went into Ford’s backyard, the western suburbs of Etobicoke, and held a rally that Ford wasn’t invited to.

The loyalty that Doug Ford and his now late brother Rob had shown to Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party was not being reciprocated by the Conservative Party of Andrew Scheer.

Now, in fairness to Scheer, the Trudeau Liberals were leaning in heavy on Ford’s first year foibles in Ontario. They weren’t campaigning against Scheer as much as they were campaigning against Ford in Canada’s biggest province.

Perhaps given Ford’s polling at the time, the distance was an understandable tactic for Scheer and his team. For Ford, however, the decision to sideline him was a betrayal of loyalty.

The Conservatives would lose the October 21, 2019 election and by mid-December Scheer had announced that he would step down as Conservative leader. Just two months after Scheer announced his resignation, the global pandemic that would rock the world and further drive a wedge between Ford and the federal party had begun.

Not much change under O’Toole...

Speaking with people in Ford’s camp and O’Toole’s camp at the time and having spoken to both men, there was no real animosity between Ford and O’Toole. There was not much of a connection between the two sides.

There were people in O’Toole’s orbit who played a role in the provincial party but given the rages of the pandemic, the travel restrictions and such there was never an attempt to bridge the divide.

Ford’s actions in the pandemic, his penchant for lockdowns and restrictions, won him no friends in much of the federal Conservative caucus. That was especially true of the Western MPs many of whom would form the core group of support for Pierre Poilievre when he set his sights on leadership.

These MPs supported the trucker convoy, were against vaccine mandates and passports and viewed Ford’s actions as anything but conservative. That he was saying he stood shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau during this time enraged them.

For this group, Ford was a traitor to their cause and not a real conservative.

Poilievre takes the helm...

By the time Pierre Poilievre won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada in September 2022, the pandemic, the convoy and all the issues that animated politics just a few months earlier were well in the rearview mirror for most Canadians. Life was returning to normal and most of us didn’t want to talk about the pandemic or the horrors we had all endured.

Ford had won his second majority government in June of that year with a campaign that talked about moving forward. His NDP and Liberal opposition remained focused on mask and vaccine mandates and other pandemic issues.

After the election and Ford’s resounding win, both opposition parties admitted they had made a fatal error by focusing so much of their campaigns on COVID.

For the federal Conservative caucus though, their resentment towards Ford remained. For many members of the federal caucus, Ford was still a villain, someone they wanted nothing to do with.

When Poilievre won the leadership on September 10, Ford called him to offer congratulations. Poilievre didn’t pick up so Ford left a voicemail congratulating him on his leadership win, left his number and asked Pierre to call him.

Ford never heard back.

On September 19, the two men ran into each other outside of Christ Church Cathedral on Sparks Street in Ottawa. They had both just attended the national ceremony to mark the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

Ford told Poilievre that he had left a voicemail congratulating him on the win, Poilievre said he hadn’t heard it, there was an awkward moment and the two men parted ways.

There was no attempt to bond, get to know each other or even pretend to be friends.

Who needs who...

When Poilievre took over as Conservative leader, his party was already ahead in most polls. The first poll released after his leadership win was from Abacus Data and showed the CPC at 35%, the LPC at 30% and the NDP at 17%.

Poilievre would lead in almost every poll over the next two years and by late 2024 a lead of 20 points or more was a common occurrence.

At that point, Poilievre winning against Justin Trudeau seemed inevitable, the Conservatives appeared to be invincible and they started to act that way.

A senior Poilievre staffer relayed a story of what the attitude was like in those days.

“We were in a meeting, and someone suggested that Poilievre speak with Doug Ford saying, ‘When you’re prime minister you’re going to need a good relationship with the premier of the largest province in the country,” the now former staffer told me.

“When I’m prime minister, he’s going to need a good relationship with me,” was the reply from Poilievre.

During this time, there was no outreach and no attempt to have the two leaders work together. Several intermediaries offered to set up a meeting, but neither side would take up the offers.

Despite Ford working publicly with Justin Trudeau – every premier has to work with the prime minister in office – Ford clearly wanted Trudeau to go. Despite that, Poilievre and the federal caucus treated Ford more like an enemy than a potential ally.

Senior members of Poilievre’s team would show up at events in Toronto openly mocking and bad-mouthing Ford. This was done in rooms of supporters who backed both Ford and Poilievre. So of course, word of the trash talking made its way back to Ford.

The bad blood existed before Teneycke spoke up…

By the time Kory Teneycke made his poorly timed and ill thought-out comments about the Poilievre campaign in the middle of the last election, the bad relationship between Ford and his team was already set in stone.

If you asked Teneycke at the time, he felt that what he was doing was trying to help a campaign that he thought was on the wrong track. Teneycke had just run a successful re-election campaign for Doug Ford and secured a third majority by running hard against Donald Trump and his tariff threat on Canada.

Running Doug Ford against NDP Leader Marit Stiles and Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie was not the same as running Pierre Poilievre against Mark Carney. Teneycke should have known that having worked at a senior level in the Harper government during the 2008-09 financial crisis where Carney was central to the government response.

Rather than take this into account, he decided to let rip and attack the Poilievre campaign.

Good intentions gone horribly wrong…

At the end of March 2025, just days into the federal campaign, Teneycke spoke at an Empire Club event in Toronto and said Poilievre and his team were focusing on the wrong issues. He felt that Poilievre should focus more on Trump rather than, in Teneycke’s opinion, sounding like Trump.

“He looks too much like Trump. He sounds too much like Trump. He uses the lexicon of Trump,” Teneycke was quoted as saying by the Toronto Star.

Those public comments came after private proposals were made, including by Teneycke to Poilievre’s campaign manager Jenni Byrne. The two have known each other for more than 30 years and just prior to the official election campaign met for dinner in Ottawa.

At that dinner, Teneycke put forward his view of what Byrne and Poilievre were doing wrong and how they needed to change. The advice was not warmly accepted, in fact, choice words were exchanged.

You can only imagine what two experienced political operatives, both A type personalities, both with big egos, would act like in a situation like that.

Teneycke was right on some issues, but not the wider issue…

I’ve argued since Teneycke’s comments were made public that having Poilievre focus on Trump and his tariffs was the wrong move. The Conservative Party’s own polling showed that talking about that issue only drove more voters to Carney.

They were right to focus on issues like affordability and crime, which drew voters to them. That said, they needed a response to Trump and didn’t have one.

As for Poilievre sounding too Trump like, that’s not how his message hit me, but polling would show that most voters found that to be the case. In politics, perception is reality and too many voters saw Poilievre as being angry, Trump like, and not ready to stand up to the American president.

It’s not like Mister Elbows Up has stood up to Trump, but that’s a story for another time.

Teneycke was right on some points, wrong on others, but his timing had a horrible impact on the Conservative campaign. It also forced Ford to comment on the issue when reporters asked him to comment on the statements from his own campaign manager.

Of course, Ford was always going to defend Teneycke. The fact that he and Byrne had parted ways in a less than amicable fashion in 2018 and the bad blood between them has only festered since didn’t help matters.

Would it have been better if Teneycke never spoke up?

Yes.

Would it have been better if Poilievre had returned Ford’s congratulatory phone call and built a relationship beginning in 2022?

Yes.

Hindsight is 20-20.

None of this happened and it is Poilievre and the federal Conservatives who have paid the price.

Freezing out Ford was far from the only issue…

It’s not just ignoring Ford that was the problem, Poilievre and his team had an isolationist attitude, they froze out everyone else.

The period before the election should have been a time for the federal Conservatives to shore up alliances with Ford, with Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, with Jean Charest in Quebec, with Tim Houston in Nova Scotia. Each of these individuals has their own political networks, their own political machines that can be called upon to draw voters in.

The campaign was so focused on the leader that they didn’t just ignore these political machines in various regions of the country, they ignored caucus members. Conservative MPs, even those with their own own audiences and media appeal were sidelined and forbidden to talk to media.

Regional ward healers were rejected as well…

Patrick Brown had actively offered up his formidable political machine in Brampton and the surrounding Toronto suburbs even though Poilievre’s team had been vicious in attacking Brown during the leadership race.

His offer was rejected.

The Conservatives lost Brampton Centre by 611 votes, Brampton South by 808 votes, and Brampton East by 1,885 votes.

This is why these provincial and regional players matter so much. Brown’s help could have turned those three ridings, possibly others in the region, into wins for Poilievre and the Conservatives.

Things have been smoothed over between Brown and Poilievre now. The two men are talking and on good terms which is good for Conservative fortunes in the future.

The relationship between Poilievre and Ford remains non-existent though, and that has to change.

If Ford isn’t your cup of conservative tea, so be it, but if you want Poilievre to win then you need him to have everyone from the conservative side working with him. Ford has won three solid majority governments in Ontario and has won many of the suburban Toronto seats that Poilievre needs to win.

Leaning on him, getting support from him, even learning from him and his team would benefit the federal party in Ontario.

As I said off the top, Steve Outhouse is doing what he can to reach out to Ford’s team, but there is a long way to go.

Given recent events, the bigger question is, will it matter? Will Poilievre still be leader come the next election?